Hope was a dangerous thing.
It did not arrive with fireworks, neither does it arrive like salvation.
It crept in quietly, through habit, disguising itself as calm, as a shared breath, and as the illusion that standing together or surviving together meant standing equal or surviving each other.
Aria felt it most acutely in the hours after the siege, subtle, treacherous. In the way Dante's hand lingered at the small of her back longer than necessary. In the way his voice softened when he spoke her name, like saying it anchored him to the world.
Hope whispered lies.
That the worst had passed.
That the walls had stopped closing.
That love, once acknowledged, loosened chains instead of reinforcing them.
They dressed wounds and called it healing. They repaired shattered stone and pretended the cracks beneath hadn't spread. They spoke of "after" as if the word itself carried absolution.
She would learn how wrong she was.
